


A Cold Day's Mage Hunt

by alistairweekend



Series: Jeirey Tabris [5]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Chance Meetings, Gen, Pre-Dragon Age: Origins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 17:46:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3419861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alistairweekend/pseuds/alistairweekend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based off the prompt: "What if Alistair and Anders had met when Alistair was still a templar recruit and Anders was a Circle mage?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cold Day's Mage Hunt

**Author's Note:**

> Brief mention of my Tabris, Jeirey, at the end.

Alistair had fallen asleep at his desk. Again.

If it hadn’t been for the sound of marching boots in the corridor outside his room, he probably would have remained asleep for some time, maybe even until the Knight-Captain or Revered Mother discovered him and cuffed him on the ear for his indolence. Again.

The teenage boy hastily sat up, wiping at his mouth and groaning when he realized he had smeared ink on his face from drooling on his citations from the Chant of Light. Not only was his face now dirty, but he would probably have to rewrite the page.

Despite this, the noises from the other side of his door were proving too interesting for Alistair to focus on his studies any longer. He stood up, rubbing what he hoped was the last of the ink from his cheek, and approached the entrance to his little room. Just as he reached for the door handle, a sharp rap sounded from behind it and the heavy slab of wood was pushed open to reveal a man in silver templar armor.

"Ser Braemin!" Alistair said in surprise. Braemin was an older man, not incredibly high-ranking within the Order yet still the superior of many templars at Redcliffe’s Chantry. Although blunt and rough, he was one of the few templars who didn’t treat Alistair like dirt, so the boy had a soft spot for the grey-haired man.

"Hello, boy. See you’ve been taking a break from your learning." Alistair turned red with shame and hastily swiped at his cheek a third time. The gruff knight allowed himself a grunt of a chuckle at that. "You can redeem yourself by getting up off your arse to try and prove yourself out in the field. We’ve caught wind of a wanted apostate’s location — seems he’s notorious for evading us templars. We’ll need all the men we can muster. Whaddya say?"

Alistair’s eyes widened. He’d never been on a mage hunt before, and honestly the idea wasn’t entirely appealing to him, but he supposed if he was going to be a templar then he might as well get used to it. Besides, it was a chance to get out of this stuffy old building and out into the real world!

"Just let me get my armor on, ser!" Alistair accepted Braemin’s offer enthusiastically.

"That’s a good lad," Braemin said approvingly. "We’ll be waiting right outside the main entrance."

***

Alistair started to regret his decision almost immediately.

The location of the mage hunt wasn’t what Alistair had had in mind when he thought of the “real world”. He had imagined a town (actually Denerim, if you really wanted to get down to it), not the woods outside Redcliffe Village. If that wasn’t bad enough, it was  _freezing_. Alistair’s teeth chattered, and there was nothing he could do about it. He began hoping the apostate would show himself, if only so Alistair would have an excuse to run and get his blood pumping.

There were nine templars on the expedition altogether. They had broken up into teams of three each and surrounded a small patch of forest where they believed they had pinpointed the apostate. Alistair was on a team with Braemin (thankfully) and a large, stoic woman who hadn’t said a single word the entire mission. Her strawberry-blonde hair was done in a very tight braid wrapped around her skull several times, contrasting with her tawny skin and allowing her sharp cheekbones to become the most prominent feature of her face, piercing green eyes peering out from above them. She was likely of mixed Chasind and Fereldan ancenstry. From listening to Braemin give orders, Alistair picked up that the formidable woman was called Halkous. The rookie knight tried to avoid her — a scene where she became offended and ran a sword straight through his chest was all-too-imaginable.

"So… Is this apostate a maleficar?" Alistair asked Braemin, boredom getting the better of him.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when Halkous answered instead. “Don’t know. Don’t care. They’re all maleficar as far as I’m concerned.”

_O-kay then,_  Alistair thought to himself, not daring to say the words aloud. Halkous seemed even less cheery than her demeanor implied.

Braemin finally added his input as well, his words not quite as firm as the other templar’s: “We don’t believe he is. Our mission is to simply bring him back to the Circle. But of course, if he gives us any reason to think he might be dangerous, that’s that.”

Alistair nodded and returned his gaze to look straight ahead, although he frowned internally. What exactly did “dangerous” entail? It was easy to picture someone like Halkous drawing her weapon if a mage so much as looked at her funny; her comment did nothing to disprove that image. Hopefully they had some stricter criteria. Hopefully they would teach it to Alistair.

Several minutes passed by before Alistair was seized by nature’s call. He groaned — now was really not the time, but there it was. “Um… Sorry, let me go duck behind a bush real quick. I’ll be back before you know it!”

He took the grunts emitted by the two warriors as consent and scuttled away, making sure they were out of eyesight before choosing a tree.

After he’d done his business, Alistair turned to head back, but realized with a terrible feeling in his stomach that he hadn’t kept track of what direction he’d come from. He muttered curses at himself as he wondered what he should do. Calling out was not an option; he didn’t want to give away his location to a potentially dangerous mage.

He was just about to select a direction to walk in and hope for the best when he heard a twig snap behind him. Breath hitching, Alistair whirled around, drawing his sword as he did so. The blade swung wildly at nothing but trees in front of him.

He felt a little foolish — it had probably just been a rabbit or some other harmless woodland creature — but he kept his sword at the ready, just in case.

"You’re new at this, aren’t you?"

The voice came from behind him, sounding mildly amused. Trying not to look too alarmed, Alistair turned and faced the person it belonged to.

It was definitely the apostate. He was blond, not unlike Alistair, although the mage’s hair was a lighter shade and not close-cropped, instead reaching down to his shoulders. The boy couldn’t have been all that much older than Alistair — a couple years at the most, if even that — and Alistair himself was rather puzzled by the nonchalant atmosphere emanating from the wanted criminal. The apostate had a staff, but it was on his back (although that didn’t mean much; mages could still use magic with their bare hands), and wore torn up Circle robes. He didn’t seem hostile, an easy smile on his face as he casually leaned against a tree trunk.

"A sword won’t do you much against a mage, not without your shield."

Alistair remembered he still had his shield on his back. He would have gotten yelled at for an error like that during training. Instead of equipping the shield, however, his arm relaxed, although he didn’t dare sheath his weapon. Something in the back of his brain was shouting  _"What are you doing?_ Not _a good idea!”_  but he ignored it.

"You’re the apostate we’re hunting?" Alistair asked. "No offense, but I thought you’d be… taller. And crazier."

The mage chuckled bitterly. “Yeah, you really are new to this.”

"If you’re not a blood mage, then why did you leave?" Alistair found himself genuinely curious.

The other boy seemed surprised. “You’re really asking me that? You haven’t even been in the Tower before, have you?”

Bemused, Alistair shook his head. He hadn’t had much experience with mages at all, having spent most of his life being raised by Eamon Guerrin at Redcliffe Castle. And by “raised”, he meant sleeping in a storeroom within the castle at night and running rampant and dirty through the halls at day, his food being provided by the arl. But no contact with mages.

"You might hear that the Tower isn’t all that bad, that we mages are just greedy and are never satisfied with what we get, but trust me, it’s exactly as bad as we say it is. We’re stuck in that place day and night, hardly ever getting a single whiff of fresh air, expected to do nothing but bury our noses in books our whole lives! If we do anything else, they accuse us of blood magic!" The mage was getting animated now, waving his arms about in frustration. It was enough to set Alistair on edge again, and the templar recruit subtly inched his free hand towards his shield. "And don’t even get me started on the templars. Always watching us, day and night, looking for any excuse to turn us Tranquil." The apostate shuddered, then seemed to catch himself. "Anyways, there you have it. That’s why I left the tower. Now, I see you’re itching to use your weapons. Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not going to fight. There’d be no use — you guys have me pretty well-surrounded. Besides, this is my fifth time escaping that wretched place; I’m not afraid to escape again. Or will you use force despite my surrender? Give me more reason to think poorly of the templars?"

Alistair didn’t know what to say to that. He stood there, rather dumbly, wondering what he should do.

"Well? Get on with it then, before I catch frostbite. Like I said, I won’t struggle."

Before he knew what he was doing, Alistair sheathed his sword. “Go,” was all he said.

The blond teen’s eyebrows rose almost all the way to his hairline. He made a move towards the forest ahead of him, then paused to look back at Alistair. “Thanks. It’s people like you who restore some of my faith in humanity.”

And with that he was gone, leaving Alistair wondering how he was going to explain such a long break to his superiors, and more importantly, how he was going to find his way back.

***

_Six years later…_

Alistair knew something looked suspiciously familiar about the blond mage he was being introduced to.

"This is Anders," Jeirey told him with a smile, her elven features highlighted by the fire blazing in the grand hallway of Vigil’s Keep. "I saved him from being captured by the templars a time or two, even after he became a Grey Warden." She laughed lightly, and the man standing before them chuckled along with her, the skin around his brown eyes crinkling slightly with his smile. Just like it had six years ago.

He hardly looked any different from back then, the main differences being a golden earring hanging from his ear and more defined stubble on his chin. Alistair didn’t look incredibly different either, when he thought about it. Maybe a bit taller and more muscular, but that was all. Six years wasn’t all that long. And yet so much had happened: Alistair had left the Chantry, becoming not only a Grey Warden but a hero of his country, a nobleman, a husband, and a father.

"Nice to meet you, Alistair," Anders said smoothly, reaching out to shake hands. "I’m quite the fan thanks to Jeirey’s thrilling tales about you." Although he acted as though it was their first time meeting, something in Anders’ smirk told Alistair that the mage remembered that cold day in the forest just as well as he did.

What were the chances that the two would meet again? And not only that, but brought together by Jeirey, of all people? Alistair almost laughed aloud at how ridiculous it all was, but instead he smiled warmly, using the hand that wasn’t wrapped around his wife’s shoulders to receive the handshake.

"Charmed, Anders," he replied. "I’m sure we’ll be great friends."


End file.
